“If you work, you need to understand the basic concept that you’re trading your time (a nonrenewable resource) for money. So when you buy something, you’re trading minutes or hours or days of your life to procure that thing.

One way to do that is to simply look at your hourly wage. If you make $20 an hour and something costs $40, you can figure that it takes two hours of your life to pay for that thing. (A fast way to estimate your hourly wage if you’re salaried: Knock off the last three zeros and halve the result, so $50,000 becomes $50, which halved is $25. The rate you get will be a bit high but in the ballpark.)”

They add that that taxes and other factors also have to be accounted for. Like many financial issues, determining the value of your time is not that simple.

Which brings us to the question: how do you value your time? Let’s say an acquaintance asks you to do a side work project for him. Do you quote your hourly wage or something different? Or say you have the choice of hiring out some home repair work or doing it yourself over several hours. How do you assign a value to the time you spend working on it? And if you have an unresolved customer service issue, how long is it worthwhile to pursuit it?